Take Your Time
by Slab
Summary: Instead of triggering because of the isolation and betrayal during the 'Locker Incident' Taylor Herbet triggers in a fit of rage. Rage at her bullies for humiliating her, rage at her classmates for laughing, rage at the teachers for doing nothing. A Master ability traded for a Thinker, how far will the ripples spread?


**So, I wrote the first two chapters of this fic when I was dead tired and published them on a whim. Having a chance to look back I'm not necessarily disappointed but I feel like I could do a lot better. The following chapter will be an amalgamation of my first two with changes made to hopefully make it match the feel of what I have planned for the rest of the fic. I will try to not make a habit of seriously changing anything I post but I felt it was necessary in this case. I will reiterate that while I have fallen in love with Worm I have yet to finish it so If you notice any major flaws that seriously contradict cannon please tell me. Also please leave any ideas for Taylor's cape name in the reviews, I have a couple in the back of my head but nothing is really clicking.**

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It's funny how quickly things can change. For example three days ago I had been dripping with orange juice and livid, tonight I was in full cape regalia and terrified. I had thought three months of training had prepared me physically, and last Thursday had prepared me mentally, to be a cape. I had set out tonight ready to stop a drug deal or a mugging, the thought of maybe facing a minor villain had even seemed possible, nothing major but something to cut my teeth on. That confidence had fled the moment I saw twenty-some members of the Anz Bad Boys gathering at the entrance of a small two-story building.

I had been prepared for the presence of the ABB, they controlled this part of the city and it would have been stupid to think that I wouldn't at least see them, though the numbers had been a little jarring. It was the presence of Lung, the gang's leader, that had set the knot of fear in my stomach. Lung was a legend, not many besides Scion himself could claim to have fought an Endbringer solo and have won. At the moment he was only a little more than six feet tall, but I had read that during his fight with Leviathan they had been nearly the same size, somehow his smaller size did nothing to make him less intimidating. Maybe it had something to do with the fact that even now, at his weakest, he could still grind me into a fine paste without much effort. Strength, durability, a healing factor that was rumored to be able to fix anything short of death, and powerful pyrokinesis; his list of powers was impressive even before his transformation. While I had been researching him, I had only been able to find blurry photos of some winged gargantuan beast the size of a building. Not deterred by the fact it would probably take him hours to become that big I had firmly place lung in the ever-growing mental list entitled 'STAY AS FAR AWAY FROM AS POSSIBLE'. Considering the people on said list the all caps seemed entirely reasonable.

The only reason I wasn't running to the closest phone and calling people more prepared to deal with this kind of threat, namely The Protectorate or The New Wave, were the few words I had caught before I had fully realized what I had stumbled into.

"… _the children, just shoot. Doesn't matter your aim, just shoot. You see one lying on the ground? Shoot the little bitch twice more to be sure. We give them no chances to be clever or lucky, understand?"_

I had quietly retreated about a block before ducking into an alley and freezing. The problem was that I was deep in the docks, I doubted anyone would open the door to a mysterious masked stranger and all the nearby business would have been closed for a while now. With no pocket change for payphones that left me the option of running across a third of the city and hope that Lung and his gang hadn't already killed dozens of innocents by the time I got to a phone. It was stupid but something inside of me wanted to stay, to fight. I wasn't operating under the fantasy that I could actually win; but maybe I could slow them down, cause enough of a commotion that the real heroes would be called. I could see my tombstone now;

' _Taylor Hebert'_

 _Suicidal or braindead? Take your pick!_

Cautiously I poked my head out of the alley just in time to see a beaten-up car pull up and suddenly the small mob had three more members. I tried to talk myself out of it again; there were roughly twenty-five armed men and an immensely powerful parahuman a little more than a block from me, the last thing on my mind should be about how to mess with them. Instead of finally hearing logic and doing the smart thing my traitorous mind began coming up with plans of attack. As the group shifted and started meandering up the street in my general direction I pulled my head back into the relative safety of my alley and activated my power.

I had been elated when I first discovered my powers, of course there had been a brief period of time where I thought my stint in The Locker had driven me crazy, but after some tests in the privacy of my own room I had been on cloud nine. I had seen it as a tool that I could use to finally do something with the impotent rage that had been building up inside of me ever since Emma's betrayal. I hadn't cared that it wasn't flashy like the powers that the heroes had, I was going to find a way to make a difference. Looking back, I seemed hopelessly naive, how on earth could a minor Thinker power do anything against a literal dragon? I had spent hours of research trying to come up with a nice scientific way to explain and understand my power before finally giving up, in simple terms it let me control my mental perception of time. It was like an extreme version of what they do in action movies during tense action scenes, slow everything down so that the audience could understand what was going on, except I had complete control of it. I could go the other direction as well, speed things up so that the world whirled past me though the only real use of that aspect of my power was helping me get through boring classes. I was reminded of one of those 'Hypothetical' threads on PHO; but instead of 'Can Panacea be effective in Combat?' it was 'What if Velocity's power was Thinker instead of Breaker?'. I set myself at roughly twenty times faster than what I was starting to call 'baseline' and began to plan in earnest.

There was no going back now, the alley I was hiding in was a dead end and there was no way that every single one of the ABB that passed by would miraculously not notice the girl dressed up like a cape, best to at least plan. If my goal was to slow and distract the gang members I would have to do more than just throw myself at the first ABB member I saw in a desperate attack, I needed to be smart about this; well as smart as I could be while planning my own suicide mission.

There were literally hundreds of different ways I could approach this situation and even with my power I didn't have the time to contemplate each of them individually, so I broke them down into two basic categories:

1\. I could focus on the human members of the ABB, they were considerably weaker than Lung and I stood a much better chance against them than I did against their boss. On the downside, Lung himself was perfectly capable of killing his potential victims on his own and it was entirely likely he would use my fight against his subordinates as an opportunity to power up.

2\. I could take the fight directly to Lung. While much more dangerous than my other option it still held some promise. While it was unlikely I could take somebody of his caliber out of commission I wouldn't have to deal with the rank and file of the gang once the fight started. PHO was very clear that he liked to finish his own fights, getting to him might be a problem though.

My main issue with either option was that I had no idea how to respond to the guns. A good number of the ABB were 'packing heat' and I was most assuredly not bulletproof. Like a burner phone I had ultimately decided that a bulletproof vest was unnecessary for cape work, or in this case far too expensive, and had gone without. I would have done almost anything to have either of those items on me right now, as it was I had to come up with a cunning plan using the few hero-supplies I did have on me. I had bought odds and ends piecemeal over the last three months with the intention of eventually storing them in some sort of 'utility-belt', once it had become clear that any utility-belt within my price range was unbelievably dorky I had gone with cargo pants instead. Spread throughout several pockets I had stashed two packages worth of zip-ties, a roll of duct tape, three canisters of bear spray, and a small box-knife, it had seemed much more impressive mere hours ago when I had snuck out of the house. I would have to make do.

Quietly as possible, I began to empty my pockets, the rough outlines of a plan forming. As always, I took a moment to marvel at how my baseline body responded to my sped-up mind. To an outside observer my movements probably looked jerky and rushed, but to me, it looked and felt like I was pushing through thick water or jello. After what felt like ages my pockets were empty and I could begin. Any hope I still held of my power having a Tinker aspect was quickly dashed as I began assembling what could generously be called a smoke-bomb. The bear-spray was key here, I had been surprised when I first purchased the canisters that the pepper spray my dad had given me for my morning jog had packed more of a punch than the stuff designed to deter bears. It made sense when you stopped to think about it though; causing more pain than necessary to a half ton mass of muscles and claws was hardly advisable. Instead, the canisters were designed to disperse the irritant into a cloud between you and the bear so that it wouldn't want to approach you. Ripping duct-tape of the roll quietly was a chore, but after I had gotten a good length of it cut off the rest was easy. Wrapping the tape around the canisters I made sure to position them so that the mouths were arranged in rough thirds, after that it was just a matter of popping the plastic safeties off the triggers and looping some zip-ties through so that they would depress the triggers when pulled tight. The end result was ugly, slapdash, and just in time.

The ABB was only fifteen feet from my alley when I chucked my homemade smoke-bomb in what I guessed was the rough center of the group; each individual canister of bear spray was advertised as having a range of twenty-five feet, hopefully, the theoretical fifty-foot circle area of effect would catch most of them. Pulling myself back down to a meager ten times bassline I came out of the alley in a dead sprint, I was not going to give them time to react.

I must have been quite a sight, a beanpole of a girl dressed up in a mess of an outfit. I had done my best with my costume but there was only so much I could do with what money I had. In the end thrift stores had been my saving grace. With access to a plentiful supply of cheap and relatively unique clothing I had set about making my costume; the cargo pants had been the easy first step, followed closely by a pair of beat-up combat boots. While the first two items fit surprisingly well the thick leather jacket I was wearing over a regular T-shirt hung loosely on me and hid my admittedly unimpressive figure, the only bit I liked about the jacket was the hood, with it up I can keep my hair long without the fear of it being used against me in a fight. My mask had to be the oddest bit; a gas mask bought from a hardware store, one of those weird ones where the filter jutted off to one side, and a pair of high-end skiing goggles that I had found for a steal at a thrift store combined to hide almost my entire face. Taken all together it fell more on the ragtag end of the homemade costume spectrum, but it served its dual purpose of basic protection and keeping my identity hidden.

I was past the first few ABB thugs before they could react in any substantial way, none of them had been carrying a gun, and three out of the four of them had been carrying baseball bats and the like, weapons most useful when you had the space to swing them. Walking practically side by side they could only awkwardly brandish them at me as I slipped past; I made sure to stay clear from the girl on the far end though, she was holding a nasty looking knife and looked like she knew how to use it. The next cluster seemed even more surprised than the first, their view of me had probably been obscured by their buddies, on the downside a few of them had guns. Their shouts of surprise sounded almost comical instead of threatening when slowed down and I felt herself grin slightly as I ducked under a swinging arm of a man who was desperately trying to turn an aborted attempt at drawing his firearm into some sort of a physical attack.

To be fair to the gangbangers I was moving pretty fast, a lot faster than three months of morning jogging should be able to account for, I wasn't entirely sure how to account for it myself. I wasn't suddenly on par with Olympic athletes, but a casual observer could be forgiven for believing I was part of Winslow's Track Team. My best guess to where the extra boost in speed came from had to do with the rate at which my muscles contracted. Theoretically speaking my power might change how my nerves sent signals to the rest of my body, when I sped up my mental perception body was receiving the signals faster and more frequently and that might correspond to my muscles contracting at a quicker rate and there were books worth of information about how that affected the forces someone's muscles could exert. Granted I had understood only about a fifth of what I had read on the subject and powers frequently flew in the face of conventional science so I in the end I decided to not look a gift horse in the mouth and just be happy about it.

By the time I was past the first two clusters of goons and heading towards the larger central mass of them I started to see the effects of homemade smoke-bomb. The spray had diffused into a thick ugly yellow fogbank that thinned out considerable around shoulder height, it was almost hypnotic how it twisted and flowed while expanding. Combined with the low evening light and the lack of any functioning street lights this deep in ABB territory all that I could make out of the rest of the eighteen-some gangbangers were vague outlines. As one of them pushed past me, tears streaming out of his bloodshot eyes, it occurred to me that with my goggles giving my eyes a measure of protection that once the fog spread far enough I would be only one on the street able to see, it was strange to not be the visually impaired one…. comparatively.

I wanted to hold my breath as I ran into the fog, I hadn't really tested my mask against the bear-spray yet, but my power acted weird around semi-conscious acts like breathing so I didn't want to upset the steady twenty-five count groove I had set myself into. My first breath in the fog went well, as did the second. I let myself grin slightly underneath my mask, maybe this plan would actually work! now I just needed to find Lung… great.

I had, for the moment, taken care of the more human element of the present ABB; hopefully, none of them would risk shooting into the fog. I had a good idea of which of the vague shapes Lung was, he was near the epicenter of the fog. Ironically until he started attacking I would probably be safer closer to him, while Lung could probably survive a gunshot I wouldn't envy the ABB member that hit him with crossfire. Everything I had read about Brutes suggested that if they weren't functionally invulnerable, which I was fairly certain Lung wasn't, you hit them hard and fast not giving them time to react or let them set the fight on their terms. The most conservative estimate for his Brute rating before he began to transform put him at a three, meanwhile my most excessive estimate for my Thinker rating was a two… maybe a three.

If I survived the night I was going to buy an actual weapon, my box-knife seamed entirely too small in my clenched fist. Adjusting my course I wove between two stumbling ABB thugs who looked like they were trying to cough up a lung. Heh… Lung. Putting aside my poor excuse for humor I did my best to weave my way through the fleeing ABB and move deeper into the fog.

I had tossed my homemade smoke-bomb a little more than fifteen seconds ago, almost two minutes from my perspective. How long before somebody called the PRT or they took notice, how much longer before they can send a team that can actually do something against a high-tier threat like Lung?

I nearly tripped when my foot landed on something I couldn't see through the dense fog. Maybe one of the ABB had dropped something; then again this was The Docks, it could have just been some street trash. Thankfully I was able to quickly compensate my balance without losing a beat, but it did remind me that I needed to pay attention to the task at hand. It didn't matter how much extra time my power bought me to think a situation out if I spent it all focusing on the negative. Right now I needed to focus on what I could do, especially since it was becoming increasingly clear that I was sprinting directly at Lung.

The fog was beginning to thin slightly, which was kind of worrying, but I hadn't really expected to get a lot of mileage out of my slapdash work. When I had dove into the fog with the goal of finding Lung I had chosen the tallest silhouette near the center and figured that if I was wrong I'd find out soon enough, now as I was drawing closer and I could start to make out some details that suggested I was right. There were the subtle clues; like how even while he was coughing he wasn't bent halfway over trying to lose an internal organ through sheer diaphragmic strength, instead he was standing as tall as he could give the circumstances and glancing about and generally not fleeing in search of clean air. Of course, there were less subtle clues such as the ornate steel dragon mask he was wearing and the metallic scales pushing themselves out of his skin… disgusting. Thankfully he had barely begun to transform and the, surprisingly blood-free, scales only covered his shoulders with a few scattered patches across his chest.

I pushed myself harder, I was still more than a dozen feet from the Supervillain and I needed to close that distance. Getting in close and personal with a Brute was stupid, especially on my first night, but I was well with his range as a Blaster and I didn't particularly want to burn to death tonight. Suddenly Lung shifted to face me; if I had been at baseline his movements would probably have seemed startlingly quick but for me it was horrifying for completely different reasons. I could see his muscles ripple as he twisted at the waist so that his torso was parallel to me, his molten eyes were staring right at me and I was a little surprised that they were glowing. Even the fact that he was half bent over from a cough added to the aura of pure danger he seemed to exude; instead of looking weak or defeated he looked angry; beastlike. Ironically if I hadn't been using my power I would have reacted; stumbled or slowed down from my dead sprint in an instinctive response to danger. Instead, I kept pushing myself, one step after another through the thick jello like air. As I slowly ate away at the distance between the two of us Lung pushed himself to his full height and held his arms out in a classic 'come get me' pose. Apparently I didn't look like much of a threat; hopefully I could make him regret that assessment.

The thing most people don't think while running is that for about half of the time neither of your feet are touching the ground; for most people this happens so quickly, a bit over a third of a second, that they don't think about it. For me those three relative seconds are like short bursts of flight. Most people, even Movers or other Brutes would have slowed down as they approached Lung so they could more properly try to beat each other into an early grave, again I failed to live up to the standards. Thanks to my power I had been able to time it so that my left foot hit the ground just inside of his, this close it was obvious he was more than a half foot taller than me. I could feel the momentum from my run slowly pushing my body forwards, thankfully the way I had planted my foot let me put most of that into my upper body. Conscious of just how close I was to one of the city's most powerful ganglords I attacked. Just moments before I had cocked my left arm back, now I lashed it forward in what I hope was a brutal first strike.

I was a fifteen-year-old girl that had only started working out a couple of months ago, I could have wailed on Lung all day long and he'd walk away without a mark on him. So I wasn't going to punch him, my hand wasn't even formed into a fist; Instead, I held it in a manner that would be instantly recognizable to those who attended The School of Hard Knocks, especially those under the tutelage of professors Moe, Larry, and Curly. Emma and I used to watch old Three Stooges reruns every Saturday morning, but we had only tried to emulate them once, one three hour lecture from all four of our parent's about the dangers of eye injuries had been all I needed, for months afterwards I had been haunted by nightmares where I would injure my eyes in strange and new ways. I had no doubt that those nightmares would be making a comeback after tonight. There was a disgusting squelching noise as my fingers dug into his eyes that was all the more horrible for how long it was dragged out.

Lung's body must be warmer than the average person's because my fingers stung like hell from the heat even after I pulled them out, I felt like puking. Lung wasn't reacting any better than I was, a deep throaty scream tore from his throat and it was only because I was already dodging below his left arm that I avoided his flailing grasp. In the dark, I couldn't tell if he had grown claws yet but I didn't want to find out. With a spin that was almost graceful, I turned around so that I was facing his bare tattooed back and slashed at him. That was the first rule about fighting Brutes, especially regenerator types, was that according to PHO you couldn't give them a single moment to react. Admittedly my second attack didn't have the same bite as my first one, while a harsh red line had appeared running diagonally from his right shoulder down shiny metallic scales gleamed out from underneath a thin layer of skin.

Following the second rule on fighting Brutes, I jumped back as soon as it became clear that I wasn't hurting him and just barely avoided his mad swipe. It was at that moment that the Universe flexed its' muscles because the moment the moment I started feeling confident that I'd survive the night my right foot hit the pavement shortly before my left one hit the raised lip of the sidewalk. Under most circumstances, my power would have allowed me to adjust my balance quick enough to stop myself from falling but of course, something else had to happen. Lung exploded. I'm not sure if it was shock or some extra push from the explosion that did it, but whatever it was I was falling backwards, and lung was just getting started.

Instinctively I pushed my power harder, bringing myself to approximately fifty times baseline, the fastest I had ever put myself at for an extended period of time, and took stock of the situation. I had hurt lung, and temporally disabled what must be a good portion of the ABB's entire standing force. That was impressive, something to take pride in even, but it would all be useless if I couldn't find a way to salvage the situation. Lung would heal, I'm not sure how long it'd take him but a lot of the more serious members of the PHO threads dedicated to him were certain that he could regrow _anything_ given enough time or nearby fights to fuel his power. That brought up a question; why didn't Lung run fighting rings? He had the people for it, and depending on his range he could swing by for a few hours any time he needed to personally needed to deal with a situation and give himself a head start on his transformations! If my body could respond to my brains singles in any reasonable way at this speed I would have shivered, if he had used a set up like that Lung would have control over the entire city now instead of just a good chunk of it. I was getting off track, I noticed I had a tendency to do that lately what with all the extra time my power gave me to get sidetracked with. If Lung killed me, a prospect looking all the more likely the longer this fight went on, he would be able to rally his troops through sheer terror and they'd go on their merry way and be killing those kids in a couple of minutes.

I still had a good view of Lung, something that would change in the subjective minute it would take me to fall. He was still completely covered in fire and I tried not to think about how his pants were burning too and he would likely be naked in another minute or two. His mask was still on, but the details were hard to make out through the flames dancing around his head. If he had eyes he would be staring straight at me; how had he done that… enhanced hearing? The flames were an issue in more ways than one. Once again, he was in a situation to deal with me as a Blaster instead of a Brute but even if I did get in close again I wouldn't be able to even touch him without at least getting second degree burns. I could try running back through the fog and pick up a more substantial weapon from one of the incapacitated gang members? While better than nothing I don't really think I'd accomplish much, scales had already pushed themselves out along most of Lung's torso.

I had always been a bit of a cape geek but over the last few months I had gone from 'generally knowledgeable' to something approaching 'encyclopedic and obsessive'. It had been necessary, as a Thinker knowledge was my power and I didn't want to go into any fight blind. Of course, the biggest source of information on parahumans anywhere was PHO, granted it wasn't always _good_ information and a lot of it was built off speculation but something was better than nothing. Over the course of several dozen power fueled binge sessions I had read almost every single post and thread that was even tangentially related to Brockton Bay taking detailed notes that had eventually turned into a thick notebook that I had eventually completely rewritten this time in code! Of course, it had been in my backpack when The Terrible Trio had ambushed me last Thursday and had been ruined alongside everything else I had tried to keep safe from theft or _loss_ in my backpack _._ Lung had the honor of having a full five pages front and back dedicated to him and a good portion of it had been speculations and theories about how exactly his power scaled with his transformation, according to most of those theories I had practically no chance of hurting him now. Maybe if I had a Brute rating but the only one on the street with one of those was Lung…. Well food for thought.

I had already eaten up more than half of my fall time with speculation and Lung's nightmarish form was disappearing into my field of view. With aching slowness I continued to fall; little by little I maneuvered myself so that instead of just hitting the ground like sad sack of potatoes I'd come out of it in a somewhat serviceable position that I could hopefully turn into a full sprint. Whatever I ended up doing I was pretty certain standing still in the general area of burning rage beast that almost certainly wanted me dead was not going to be part of the plan. Carefully I begun to pull myself down from fifty into the much more serviceable mid-twenties off baseline, letting my left forearm hit the ground hard I pulled my left leg tight against my chest my, combat boot scraping against the ground. It took me a frustratingly long time to find purchase but the whole time I was rotating the majority of my body mass so that it was parallel to the ground and shot my other hand out to catch myself. Successfully landing in an awkward rendition of a sprinters crouch I pulled myself back to just over ten time times baseline and did my best to explode forward like a track-star. The results were less than stellar but at least I was moving. Dodging past a fire-hydrant I started to desperately scan the still hazy street for _anything_ that might help me survive the night.

I needed a plan; correction I needed to choose a plan. I had a dozen half formed ones that had been flickering distractingly through me head the entire fight, none of them had any concrete chance of success and most of them operated under incomplete understanding of Lung's power. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Lung rear back, the flames coating his body not quite growing but shifting in an intense way.

Okay, sociopathic dragon getting ready to burn me alive I needed to do something NOW! Unwillingly my mind drifted back to the PHO forums; there were some diehard cape fans that would kill for a video of this fight, especially the tinhats. They'd probably do a frame by frame analysis of his cough and use that as evidence that… Lung had coughed, that implied that he needed to breathe right? At the very least it was uncomfortable for him not to, his regenerative powers didn't seem to completely break the laws of biology, just bend them. Skidding to a halt I spun and started running right back from where I had come from. I dove forward just as a dull _whump_ as a ball of fire twice my size hit the wall of the building behind me. The heat that washed over me was almost unbearable, but hey, at least I wasn't on fire. I scooted slightly, trying to get things lined up _just_ right. I came back down to baseline, either this would work, or it wouldn't.

"Hey!" I yelled. I was an idiot, but at least I was an idiot with a plan. "Puff the Magic Dragon, come and get me!" My words came out muffled behind my mask and I was shocked at how out of breath I was. There was an awful moment where I thought Lung was just going to throw another ball of fire at me and be done with it. Instead the supervillain let out a half yell half roar that might have been the phrase "cocksucker" before lunging directly at me. I smiled.


End file.
